What We’re Following
Cohen’s Claim: Michael Cohen is reportedly prepared to tell prosecutors that he and several others were present when Donald Trump learned of his campaign officials’ plans to meet with a Russian lawyer who’d promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton. Trump’s legal team denies Cohen’s account—but the president’s claims about the meeting have been proven false before. Here’s what legal experts say Cohen’s statements could mean for Trump.
Education News: Emails obtained by The Atlantic reveal that while working in Trump’s education department, a former official scheduled meetings with his contacts in the for-profit college industry to discuss regulations on that industry that are now being scaled back. Read Adam Harris’s report. Elsewhere, ethical controversies have prompted the Koch Foundation to release more information about the contracts related to the funding it gives universities. Here’s how Arizona State University plans to spend the foundation’s latest grant.
Drug-Industry Ethics: A clinical trial that repurposed sildenafil, an erectile-dysfunction drug, to treat a condition in which fetuses grow too slowly in the womb has been canceled after 11 of the babies in the study died after birth. Sarah Zhang explains the science and the economics that led to the test. And the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline announced a deal with 23andMe that will allow it to use the DNA-testing company’s customer data for drug research, prompting backlash about the ethics of 23andMe’s business model.